I've come to measure time and space by your absence
A series of days to distract me from our meeting place
Weeks to separate memory from smell, blue sage and pine
Of the familiar hum of my fingers, tracing your Anahata  
Gently, as to wake it from its stubborn slumber
Yet somehow the color of your presence, always remaining
A distant, tantalizing green blur upon my horizon
Orbiting slowly closer, always just out of reach

He swallowed my soul
Whole, sipped smoothly down
Gracefully, without need for chase
In one prolonged indigo gulp
Without a spill,
Without a single drop escaping
His thirsty, reptilian gaze
It was just a thrill, in the end
A specimen for is lens to collect
Another Lazarus to resurrect,
Another holy mountain to tame,
Another color to weave into his coat,
Then to toss over my shoulders
From behind,
In the window full of sunrise.

No force of nature, no divination of the corners
Nor the tea leaves, spread out loosely
Conveying chaos in their spiral form
Nor your heart line, dipping down deeply
Into the territory of water, selfish and wandering
Nor your telling Capricorn birth
Ruled by rigid grounding, your father the earth
Nor the eight of swords, repeated in every reading
Blindfolded and reaching forward
None of these can deter the velocity of my falling
Towards the pull of your body's gravity, refractory
Freed from any other want or need than the divination of your sheets
I'm puppet on a string, held low above your lust's steady flame
Leaning down low, dipping my toes into your karmic fire
Transported to a future drenched in the color of your gaze
Regardless of hexed hematite or rabbits foot
Lost sight of all pink candle and rosehip, all mundane and esoteric
My soul is yours, to save or spend sordidly
To toss into the shallow waters of the fountain of fate

Love is the last pull of your cigarette
All muscle and need and then,
Nothing
A slip of the wrist, empty space
Tossed to the road left behind you

I hope we feel something
My prayer
As it melted onto me

To write is to self harm
To create is to relearn
To love is to let go
But these hands fail me
And this heart speaks to me
Only in hushed tones

It's just a muscle, she says
Predicts from her bag of tricks
Paints a portrait of my soul in red
It's the last call for your crystal ball
Come remedy your destiny
In a year or two or three
On some rainy November morning
It will stretch back

Bow down to the ***** gods
The spark has spoken

Get by get high get on get off

As Captain Jack kisses of the last roach
Lavender's in the boathouse window shouting that she's grown wings that she's gonna fly
over Old Casey's boat above the painted lake past where the music surrounds
permeates with the pulse of noise
Green Hat pulls me over says my name is Corey
or Kelsey
Kelly's a **** name I tell him back home people call me Blow
Enter Tennessee the cinnamon sipping reds smoking sonofagun
Are you Kevin?
I ask the fingers that familiar flight of touch leading me
down and
down and
down towards our game
"Never have I ever" howls the young Indian chief, scarf draped in madness
the fearless warrior Peepeeohpee
Someone has trapped the moon behind the window the house on the hill someone has fed the fire with its secret light
This stranger this enigma this Laura I am her cousin
and everyone I touch is Kevin
Then with the sun Tittas steps off the boat as Jesus
sacred palms slashed from last night's ritual
Bums a cig from Drew or Not Drew with the thousands out west and the lotus flower arms
Floats on her back French exhales
As I look at our feet stained red with ink all slow spirals soft wind ***** flowers
then to the shore the fireflies still dancing through the dawn
Flying high
Secretly praying to each outshine the fade

Let's fly to France, let's swim to Spain
Would could row a boat, we could hop a train

I could rob a bank, you could steal a car
We could drive all night, we could race the stars

We'll get high on love, we will live in sin
Follow our feet past places they have ever been

Let's put out our thumbs, take a holiday
We could go right now, we could leave today

You could play your music, I could learn to paint
We could live as outlaws, we could change our names

We won't need no sleep, we won't care to eat
We'll just keep on searching, following our feet

Let's take a chance, let's run away
We could **** some time, we could even stay

Sun go down. You come round. Tap your horn in my driveway

Smell so smooth. Spark so sharp. Light me to your latest song

Line so fine. Smoke so choke. Leaving low we're getting high

Drive all night. Bump til dawn. We'll all keep going, moving on

"When you blew


When you blew out the smoke,
                                                      You were something beyond you

You were
                       so much more
Than you are,


a being, beyond yourself. Another life. You see

                                                                               This moment in my life
I wish I could share more moments with you
This one moment, just speaking in your ear.                        

                                                                       Just like this

Because when you blew out the smoke,



when you blew out the smoke, you were a queen."

You,
And the smell that soaks your fingers
Relative of plastic
Of chemical, clean
That spark I found in your eye
The likes of which I'd only caught once
Reflected in mine
Of punishment and heat
Of sin drawn to sin
And that name
The only fiber of you which slips my tongue
Lost in the ache, that moment, uncut
Purgatory in the itch
Of the crawling, of hunger
Stretched tight, the rubber of your skin
That night on the sink edge
I was transformed
Born into a need, a slow burn
On the back of your guitar
I traded in these bones for bread
Of brown dogs and devils
Homesick for heaven
Of feelings lost in the drip
Oh for Southern gentlemen
All snake eyes and slow drawl
Sad cheap trick souls, all the same
Creatures of arrangement, of mutual gain

So                   you were
          naïve
So much of a wolf was
I
Silently
We lay
                       sharpening our claws
Things began in love                      seen through a filter
Numbed by
                        buzz
                        and tamed by drugs

Of the lingering calmness of a


                                                              ­                 comedown
And the
                       ricochet of our fingers

My sweet dope,
You                        were
Your last pull was

                                                         It's beat.

On the seventh day I met the devil
All alone on your bedside table
Without his flames and yellow tape
I hardly recognized him

Dressed in his casual whites
He just looked lonely
So I simply had to touch it.
And I said, "You sure make a big deal out of being bad"

He had a gun in his right hand
It was laughing
When I asked what was so funny
He told me it wouldn't hurt

Curiosity killed the cat,
and perhaps shot a beautiful water-colored hole through my brain.

He said, "Dip your toes in. Test the waters
See if they're as hot as they say"
So I jumped on in, headfirst
To discover the waters were ice cold.

Caution, lost in the motion,
The tender lapse of green sea waves
The scent that has become you,
Sweet, sweet summer rain.

Like magnets, the polar pull, subsequent and building
The silent seize of your stomach muscles
Oh honeycomb.
Wrapped in cellophane, and the fleece in our ears

Your chin, the small hollow in which rests my head,
The cradle of your Adam's apple.
For hours I studied the color transmit in the darks of your eyes,
Of subtle change and shade

The soft, downy wool of your legs,
Warm blankets rescued from the creaking loft.
And your slow, sleeping breaths, of wind whistling through wheat fields
Shared dreams of barefoot gardens, sweet peppers in springtime

The gentle obstinacy of your fingers,
Extended forward in the thaw of shallow slumber.
The difference between oak and pine,
This nest you constructed, we lay in.

Nestled underneath the galaxy you installed, pin by pin.

The stench of battery acid in the morning
The slippery lubricant of littered snakeskin on the floor
Trash that once found liberation, salvation in the motion of its use
Now limp, lifeless, devoid
Abandoned without muscle.

The shadow of our wicked forms, braced against the balcony edge
Nerves alight, take fire. The steepest bet, a wager of the deranged sense
And that smell. It hangs in the air, still
Engulfs you as the animal sense is heightened. Without reason, all is pleasure,
All is primitive.

Out on the veranda, Diana dances. Part impulse, part stimulant. Her dimples stretching wider, farther apart as continents. Her hips convulsing
Man with the long hair, "You burn you burn"
Oh mother, we were created equally. Together in one cruel, carbonate mass of malcontent motives, of wicked intent. Selfishness attracts selfishness.

We are but a refrigerator door full of strange magnets, gleaming. Your southern fingers,
Dancing a slow tango down my spine. Your grip, lowering, sweaty and deliberate
Oh viper.
The texture of freshly cut grass and ***** crusted over bare toes. All smells of peppermint,
Bitter citrus flower.

Woke up in the morning, dowsed in kerosene
Rose petals sticking to the roof of my mouth
"There is no heaven, no hell," he said. Only us.